Civil War in El Salvador

Since the early thirties,
El Salvador had been ruled
by the military – with support from the country's landed elite. Military leaders
had been pro-fascist during World War II, but by the 1950s at least some of
them were leaning more toward the values of those who won that war. Some younger
officers had reformist views, and, beginning in 1956, a military-civilian coalition
took power, led by a reform-minded lieutenant colonel, José Maria Lemus. El
Salvador’s agricultural elite and more conservative military officers said the
government was influenced by Communism. Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, and,
in January, 1961, these more conservative officers took power in a coup and announced
their anti-Communist and anti-Castro convictions. The new regime promised elections,
and in 1962 the junta’s candidate, Lieutenant Colonel Julio Adalberto Rivera,
was elected president, and he was succeeded in 1967 by Colonel Fidel Sanchez
Hernandez.

El Salvador was known as a coffee republic, coffee being one half of the
country's export trade. Two percent of the population owned sixty percent of
the land, and fourteen families were said to own the country. El Salvador's
elite were economically progressive but politically conservative, opposed to
any threat to their power, opposed to reform that hurt them while benefiting
others connected with farming. Various owners of small plots of land had been
dislocated by the expansion of holdings devoted to the growing of crops for
export. Some of them had become seasonal laborers, while some others worked
smaller plots. And some had drifted into the cities.

El Salvador was about 140 miles long and 60 miles wide. It was the most densely
populated Central American nation, with a population of over 3.5 million and
was gaining around 157,000 persons per year. People were spilling over into
Honduras. And there, in late 1967, violence erupted over a soccer competition
between Honduras and El Salvador. The angry Hondurans expelled various El Salvadorans
from their country, including several thousand migrants. A border dispute erupted.
Trade was disrupted, and, in 1969, a four-day war called the Football War erupted.
The relative prosperity that El Salvador had been enjoying came to an end.
Passions intensified within El Salvador and temporarily the country became more
united. Peasants armed with machetes were ready to defend their country’s honor.
El Salvador invaded Honduras but withdrew without accomplishing anything. The
war ended, but no peace agreement was established concerning the border
between Honduras and El Salvador. And El Salvador was developing more economic
stress.

In the 1970s, political unrest increased. The people of El Salvador were
mostly Catholic, and a Christian Democrat Party was formed, modeled after the
Christian Democratic Party that had arisen in Chile in the 1960s – a party consisting
mainly of middle and upper class supporters who favored economic progress, moderation
and political stability. In 1972, the military suppressed an election in which
the Christian Democrats appeared to be heading for victory. The Christian Democrat
Jose Napoleon Duarte protested, was jailed, tortured and sent into exile. Against
dissent, secretive death squads appeared, consisting of people with military
and law-enforcement backgrounds, and apparently bankrolled by rich conservatives.
Political assassination was on the rise, and, as in Chile and Argentina, people
were disappearing. Intolerance for dissent was also expressed in July, 1975, when
the army fired on demonstrators that had gathered in the capital, San Salvador.

Violence was not enough to quell dissent, and the military government tried
appeasing the unrest with minor land reforms – the forced rental or possible
expropriation of lands not being used by big landowners – but the law was not
enforced. Reform-minded priests – also called liberation priests – were busy
organizing the rural poor, as were secular revolutionaries. The largest organization
was the Revolutionary Popular Bloc (the BPR) with a membership estimated at
60,000. The strategy of the priests was largely peaceful protest. A few, however,
had turned to guerrilla warfare. And trade unions joined in the hostility toward
the military government. Street demonstrations, propaganda campaigns, work stoppages
and seizures of buildings frightened conservatives.

Fraudulent elections in February, 1977, resulted in General Carlos Humbert
Romero Mena becoming President of El Salvador. People protested the results
in the streets and were fired upon, leaving as many as fifty protesters dead.
In October, a "Law for the Defense and Guarantee of Public Order" was created,
which eliminated almost all legal restrictions on violence against civilians.
Between 1977 and 1980, eleven priests were murdered and many more beaten, tortured
and exiled. El Salvador's archbishop, Oscar Romero, acknowledged that the state
had a right to strike against violence, but he spoke also of the right of people
to defend themselves against violence, the right of peasants and others to organize,
and he called for an end to state repression.

In July, 1979, the Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua.
An increased fear of revolution arose in Washington and
in El Salvador. Some in El Salvador were
afraid that what happened to Somoza and to members of Somoza's
military might happen to them. Some younger officers,
some Christian Democrats and landowners decided that a
political middle course was needed, away from the polarization
that suited revolution. The Carter administration agreed,
and so did some in the CIA, where it was feared that the
extreme left had a better than even chance of seizing and
holding power. A conspiracy was hatched to oust El Salvador's
hard-line president, General Carlos Romero, and the governments
of Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Panama were talked into
approving the coup.

The coup took place on October 15, 1979, and the Carter administration sent
the new regime an aid package of considerable size. Death Squad activity, however,
continued. In March, 1980, Archbishop Romero was murdered. And, within the country's
security forces old habits prevailed. At Romero's funeral, on March 30, security
forces attacked the crowds, and news footage of unarmed demonstrators being
gunned down on the steps of the National Cathedral had a strong impact abroad,
including the United States.

The assassination of Archbishop Romero and the killing of mourners at his
funeral swung many away from the regime into an alliance with those who were
in armed rebellion against the government. It was now that the guerrilla war
would take off as a significant challenge to the government. The guerrillas
were a coalition called the Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN), Martí having been the leader of the 1932 peasant rising. The coalition included frustrated
former Christian Democrats, among them Rubín Zomora, who had originally been
opposed to armed struggle. He was educated, with a degree in political science.
He had joined the 1979 coup against General Carlos Romero in hopes of change.
His brother had been assassinated after having complained about assassinations.
Joining the FMLN, Zomora became its civilian chief of staff, and he took many
disillusioned Christian Democrats with him. As they saw it, without honest elections
as a means of political expression, armed opposition was the only course open
to them other than just weeping and doing nothing.

In December, 1980, four churchwomen from the United States were murdered, which
angered President Carter and led to the suspension of military aid. An attempt
to investigate the assassinations made high-ranking military officers in El
Salvador appear to be orchestrating a cover-up of the affair. The "middle course"
government, meanwhile, had named the moderate Christian Democrat, Jose Napoleon
Duarte, back from exile, as provisional president.

The FMLN began a major offensive on January 10, 1981, hoping to take power
before Ronald Reagan took office on January 20. Their offensive surprised government
forces but failed to overwhelm them. The countrywide rising that they expected
had not materialized. They emerged dominant in various places, especially in
the Chalatenango area. The governments of Mexico and France recognized the FMLN
as a "representative political force" in El Salvador. These governments called
for a negotiated settlement of the war. And arms to the FMLN began arriving,
mainly from the Soviet Union, through Cuba and Nicaragua.

On September 15, 1981, President Duarte announced that elections for a Constituent
Assembly would be held in March 1982 – an assembly to lay the groundwork for
a presidential election, and an assembly, it was hoped, that would include the
reforms that his government had decreed. In the elections for this assembly,
an atmosphere of violence prevailed, and a political party, ARENA, emerged that
was led by Roberto D'Aubuisson, a former intelligence officer known for his
participation in death squads and believed to have instigated the assassination
of Archbishop Romero. D'Aubuisson tried to create an image of respectability
and moderation for the sake of appealing to the average voter, and he became
president of the Constituent Assembly.

The FMLN wanted to be involved in the democratic process and was pressing
for a negotiated "power-sharing" agreement that would grant it a role in a revamped
governmental structure. The Reagan administration was opposed to any agreement
with the FMLN. Reagan had accused the Carter administration of weakness in face
of the rise of Communist revolution in Central America and had decided on taking
a tough stand against the FMLN. "El Salvador," he said, "is the front line in
a battle that is really aimed at the very heart of the Western Hemisphere, and
eventually us." note33 The Reagan administration was thinking about Vietnam and did not want another "successful" Communist insurgency. Reagan wanted to substantially
increase military and economic aid to El Salvador. Congress had voted in January
1982 to require certification by the Reagan administration of El Salvador's
progress in curbing abuses by the military and of implementation of economic
and political reforms every six months. Reluctantly, the Reagan administration
had accepted the certification requirement and had proceeded with its policy
of a military buildup against the FMLN, while urging upon El Salvador's government
and its security forces an end to death squad activity.

The war in El Salvador escalated, government forces there now using helicopter
gunships extensively, and punishing communities hostile to the government forces
by bombing. U.S. military advisors abounded, while the FMLN held strongholds
in the mountainous north and were expanding toward the Pacific Coast.

Jose Napoleon Duarte won the presidential elections of 1984. The fighting
dragged on into 1986. Abuses against civilians by government forces continued,
with the courts in the hands of those unwilling to take legal action against
the abuses, while Duarte favored a negotiated settlement with the FMLN.

By 1988, FMLN leaders believed that international support for their cause
was waning. In January, 1989, Reagan left office, and the new administration
of George Bush Sr. joined with other American countries supporting a negotiated
end to the war in El Salvador – as was happening in Nicaragua. In March, 1989,
a member of the ARENA party, Alfredo Cristiani, was elected President of El
Salvador. He, too, favored a negotiated end to the war, and because he was a member
of the nation's conservative political party he was able to take many conservatives
with him.

On November 9, the Berlin Wall was torn down. Negotiations between Cristiani's
government and the FMLN broke down, and the FMLN launched a military offensive,
attacking military centers in major cities. The military bombed residential
neighborhoods believed to be supporting the FMLN. Nonessential U.S. personnel
were shipped out of San Salvador. On November 15 at a secret meeting, senior
Salvadoran military officers gave orders to kill Father Ignacio Ellacuria and
to leave no witnesses. On November 16, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper
and her daughter were rousted from their beds and shot.

The FMLN offensive failed again to ignite a popular insurrection. And in
January, President Cristiani announced detention of military men accused of
the assassinations of the Jesuit priests. In February, 1990, leaders of the
FMLN were dismayed by the Sandinista's losing power in their elections. In negotiations
with Cristiani's government, however, they were able to win concessions that
they could accept. El Salvador, it was agreed, would have a new civilian police
force that included people from the FMLN; constitutional amendments were to
strictly limit the role of the military to the defense of the country's borders;
and the FMLN was to be allowed to function as a political party in the nation's
democratic process. The accords ending the civil war in El Salvador were signed
in Mexico City in January, 1992.